Globalization and Eastern Europe : 1870-1914, 1970-2000

There have been substantial similarities between the two waves of globalization (1870-1914, 1970-2000) in Eastern Europe, as in both periods the stimuli of the economic and cultural change came from the West. While the first wave might have been more pronounced in strictly economic sense, the second is deeper in cultural and political sense. The assimilation of Western innovations has also been mediated through particular circumstances of backwardness of Eastern Europe. Thus, while modernizing, Eastern Europe has each time retained a peripheral character.